“My subway door opened into calamity. It was smoke and blood and people screaming,” eyewitness Sam Carcamo told radio station 1010 WINS. The gunfire erupted on a train that pulled into a station in the Sunset Park neighborhood, about a 15-minute ride from Manhattan and predominantly home to Hispanic and Asian communities.
Sewell said the attack was not being investigated as terrorism, but that she was “not ruling out anything.” The shooter's motive was unknown. The officials said authorities zeroed in on a person of interest after the credit card used to rent the van was found at the shooting scene.Police said that Frank James, 62, is a person of interest in the investigation, as they believe he is the person who rented the U-Haul van connected to the shooting.
MTA system chief Janno Lieber told TV interviewers he didn't know why the cameras malfunctioned. But he said police had “a lot of different options” from cameras elsewhere on the subway line to get a glimpse of the shooter. “There was a lot of loud pops, and there was smoke in the other car,” she said. “And people were trying to get in and they couldn’t, they were pounding on the door to get into our car.”“This individual is still on the loose. This person is dangerous,” the Democrat said at a news conference just after noon."This is an active shooter situation right now in the city of New York.”